Friday, August 12, 2011

New Chemo/New Side Effects

Ron's new Chemo is called Gemzar. It is given once a week for 3 weeks and one week off, then repeat. We are now navigating our way through the side effects of this regime. (Next to Ron's name in the dictionary it says,"Most likely to experience every possible side effect including the rare ones.")

After 2 days, Ron has had fever, chills, nausea, and extreme fatigue. On the bright side, his "cement mixer" of a colon has started to empty out. It won't officially be a side effect unless it progresses to diarrhea.

I have made 2 more after hours on-call oncology calls and one more trip to the pharmacy for some tylenol for his fever....

I am so thankful to have "our" support team here. I don't know how I was managing before Ron's family arrived.We each have taken on our areas of responsibilty: Florrie is master chef, seamstress, and late nite massage therapist. Denis is maintenance, gardening, master food sampler, and random acts of comic relief. Jamie is IT dept.(all things technology),purchasing (online and off), wine steward, butler, and is fast becoming a rival to the master chef of the house.(His latest raspberry almond muffins were delicious!) I continue my role as lead pharmacist, poopologist, appointment setter, litter box scooper, driver and shift supervisor.

4 comments:

Hiya Ron and family, What a pain in the arse trying to leave a message on this thing!! Glad to see Ron hasnt lost his youthful good looks as he continues to kick this little afflictions arse!! I'm no expert on these matters but a friend of mine who was in a similar situation found great strength in reading Lance Armstrongs autobiography. You are lucky we are still friends mate after having a shocking day at wembley last year Bolton v Stoke!! Best wishes to you all.

Ron, I was thinking about you this weekend. I talked with my brother in law about picture disks. At one time he had collected them and I thought he might still have a few. Although he sold them all a few years ago he went on and on talking about them. It was so much fun to share his memories of those silly records.

Of all those disks he collected he probably only ever listened to a handfull of them. It's funny what can make you smile.

Robert keeps me posted on your condition - indulge in a trip down memory lane, if it makes you smile! Just thinking about talking with you about something as odd as picture disks makes me smile!

Patricia, my heart goes out to all of you. Melvin has been keeping me updated and he pointed me to this blog. Give Ron a hug from us both and please let us know if you need anything or if you and Ron are up for visitors.

Links worth checking out

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If you want to leave a message for Ron on this site, these are the steps:1.Go to the upper right corner of the page and click on Sign In.2.You will be sent to the Eblog Home page. On the right side of the pageyou will see: Don't have a Google account? Get Started.3.Click on Get Started 4. You then fill out the form with your current email address and choose a password, there are a couple other boxes to check as well.5. Once you are accepted, the next time you enter the blog site and click on Sign In (Upper right corner of page), you can enter your email address and password and then you are able to add comments.6. Maybe.